Friday – The Darkness Falls….

Matthew 27: 11-26 (NLT Version)
¹¹Now Jesus was standing before Pilate, the Roman governor. “Are you the king of the Jews?” the governor asked him. Jesus replied, “You have said it.”
¹²But when the leading priests and the elders made their accusations against him, Jesus remained silent. ¹³“Don’t you hear all these charges they are bringing against you?” Pilate demanded. ¹⁴But Jesus made no response to any of the charges, much to the governor’s surprise.
¹⁵Now it was the governor’s custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner to the crowd – anyone they wanted. ¹⁶This year there was a notorious prisoner, a man named Barabbas. ¹⁷As the crowds gathered before Pilate’s house that morning, he asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you – Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” ¹⁸(He knew very well that the religious leaders had arrested Jesus out of envy.)
¹⁹Just then, as Pilate was sitting on the judgement seat, his wife sent him this message: “Leave that innocent man alone. I suffered through a terrible nightmare about him last night.”
²⁰Meanwhile, the leading priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be put to death. ²¹So the governor asked again, “Which of these two do you want me to release to you?” The crowd shouted back, “Barabbas!”²²Pilate responded, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” ²³“Why?” Pilate demanded. “What crime has he committed?” But the mob roared even louder, “Crucify him!”
²⁴Pilate saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere and that a riot was developing. So he sent for a bowl of water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. The responsibility is yours!”
²⁵And all the people yelled back, “We will take responsibility for his death – we and our children!” ²⁶Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.

Just 5 days ago, we celebrated Palm Sunday. Today is Good Friday, the bleakest moment in the Gospels.

From the perspective of 2017, the first Easter crowds seem incredibly fickle. They welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, but less than a week later they were calling for him to be crucified! Perhaps Jesus no longer served their agenda! People had been happy to join the ‘happy throng’ when there was ‘merry-making’, but now that things were getting tough, their numbers were quickly dropping away.

The disciples seem completely clueless about what is going on in spite of all the related prophecies in their Scriptures and Jesus’ repeated attempts to help them understand! They had thought that Jesus would be their Messiah; they had thought that he would forcibly deliver his people from all oppression. By this time, they were wondering how any of that could possibly happen – now that it all looked so bleak…now that the darkness was falling.

Pilate, the Roman governor finds Jesus innocent of any crimes, but nonetheless, he gives the crowd the option of releasing Jesus or a guilty criminal, Barabbas. The crowd choose Barabbas to go free thereby sealing Jesus’ fate. An innocent man would die in place of a guilty man. This pointed to the greater truth that Jesus would die instead of and on behalf of guilty humanity.

The religious leaders in this story behaved despicably; Pilate, the Roman governor acted in a ‘spineless’ way. By ‘washing his hands’ of the whole affair, he effectively said ‘I don’t agree with this course of action but neither am I going to do anything to stop it.’ Not one of the key characters comes out of this story as having behaved well, except for Jesus. But it’s for all people, including fickle, clueless, despicable, spineless people that Jesus died.

The wondrous thing is that Jesus’ love for them, and us, was so utterly overwhelming that he was prepared to submit to the greatest injustice ever known!

Not one of us deserves God’s love, but God loves us anyway. Not one of us deserves that Christ should die for us, but he died for us anyway. What a love, what a cost – we stand forgiven at the cross!

Oh, to see the dawn of the darkest day
Christ on the road to Calvary
Tried by sinful men, torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood

This, the power of the cross
Christ became sin for us
Took the blame, bore the wrath
We stand forgiven at the cross

Oh, to see the pain written on Your face
Bearing the awesome weight of sin
Ev’ry bitter thought, ev’ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow

(Getty & Townend © 2005 Kingsway’s Thankyou Music)

You might want to read these following verses out loud.

Mark 15: 33-39 (NIV Version)
³³ At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. ³⁴ And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). ³⁵ When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” ³⁶ Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. ³⁷ With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
³⁸ The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. ³⁹ And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Silent Reflection….and waiting…
It’s relatively easy to walk with Jesus through the good and happy ‘Palm Sunday’ times? Will we continue to journey with him when the darkness starts to fall, when we do not know how things will pan out and when all we can do is to wait?

Prayer
Jesus take me as I am, I can come no other way. Help me to be honest with myself and with you. Thank you that you welcome me just as I am, although you don’t want to leave me just as I am. Thank you that you can redeem any situation. Help me to let go of confusion, insincerity, anger and defensiveness. Help me to become the person you are calling me to be, growing in relationship with you, growing in the fruit of the Spirit and better reflecting your glory!  In Jesus name, Amen.

Blessing
Be sent out assured of the love of God.
Be sent out convinced of the grace of the Lord Jesus.
Be sent out filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
For His is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
Forever and ever,
Amen.

Tuesday: Gnats and Camels

Matthew 23: 23-24 (NLT Version)
^23“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law – justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. ²⁴Blind guides! You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel! ²⁵“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. ²⁷“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ²⁸In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

On Tuesday morning, Jesus and his disciples went back to Jerusalem.

As they passed the Temple, the religious leaders challenged Jesus about his authority. They were trying to catch him out so that they had an opportunity to arrest him.

Jesus, on this occasion, was far from quiet. He told the leaders in no uncertain terms that they were so blind that they could not see what God wanted them to see.

They were so meticulous in their observance of the ‘letter of the law,’ that it seems that they ensured that they had given 1/10th of all their herbs.  I imagine them out in their gardens with a wooden ruler! Jesus is not saying that their observance of the law was wrong, but rather that their focus was wrong.

These people had been so obsessive about getting the rules right; about ‘straining the water to avoid swallowing a gnat’ that they had effectively swallowed a camel! They had failed to do the most important thing…..to

‘act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God.’ (Micah 6:8)

The rules had been intended to help them to bless others, but the people had become so caught up with dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s that they were failing to be a blessing to anyone! Such an attitude was unacceptable to Christ then and it still is today.

Reflection
Spend a few minutes thinking quietly. Afterwards, if you are in a group, share any relevant thoughts.

Do we sometimes try so hard to get things right, obsessing about the detail, that we can miss who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do?

What does it say about our ‘heart attitude’ if we only give Jesus 1/10th – the leftovers of our life? Ask God to show you how you can cultivate an attitude of gratitude, of love and of a generous spirit.

If we are walking humbly with the Lord, we will find that we increasingly reflect his character to the world, a character of justice and mercy. In what practical ways are we showing his character of justice and mercy in this community, in our work places, in this nation and in the world?

Prayer
Spend some time praying about the things that we have been thinking about today.

Blessing
May the blessing of God’s light be on you; light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire, so that stranger and friend may come and warm themselves at it.
And may light shine out of your eyes, like candles set in the window of a house, bidding the wanderer come in – out of the storm.
Amen
(Adapted from a Scottish Blessing)

Monday – A House of Prayer for All Nations!

Mark 11: 15-18a (NLT version)
¹⁵ When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, ¹⁶ and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace. ¹⁷He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” ¹⁸When the leading priests and teachers of religious law heard what Jesus had done, they began planning how to kill him.

Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and was crucified later the same week on the Friday. What on earth happened in between?

We know that he had a final supper with his friends and that he washed their feet. We know that he cursed a fig tree and that he wept over the city of Jerusalem.  Yet, those actions don’t really seem like the sort of things that would get someone executed. What might step things up a bit more are the events of Marks Gospel when Jesus walked into the Temple and turned over the tables of the money-changers. Jesus’ actions in the Temple are a crucial part of the Holy Week story and show Jesus’ radical agenda – an agenda that would not just turn the tables upside down, but that had the capacity to turn the world upside down.

So….the day after Jesus is welcomed into Jerusalem, he heads to the Temple. He is so enraged by what he finds that he pushes over the tables of the money changers, scatters the money and drives the traders out with whips!

This is not how we think of Jesus! What has made him act this way?

It is thought that this incident happened at Solomon’s Porch, the outermost part on the east side of the Temple and the gateway to the Court of the Gentiles. This had become a noisy, crowded market full of hustle and bustle and probably quite smelly from all the animals! Yet, Jesus wasn’t opposed to markets…so what was the problem?

An inscription uncovered by archaeologists may help us understand. The inscription found in the Court of the Gentiles is dated 20 B.C. and warns Gentiles (non-Jews) that they must not go any further into the Temple…‘on fear of death.’ The only place that the Gentiles were permitted to worship was in this outer part of the Temple, but how could they possibly pray and worship God in the middle of a noisy, crowded market?! A little research shows that the whole layout and practices of the Temple served to successively exclude different categories of people. In this case, the Gentiles were effectively being prohibited from worshipping.

People were being stopped from coming closer to God! This was a huge injustice and a huge sin, albeit perhaps, an inadvertent one!

Quoting Isaiah 56:7, Jesus said ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ (Mark 11:17).

Reflection
Spend a few minutes thinking or discussing:

What barriers do we (perhaps inadvertently) put up that might make it harder for people that are ‘not like us’ to worship or to come closer to Jesus?

How, individually and as a congregation, can we build more bridges to our community and to those who do not yet know Jesus? How can we dismantle the walls that might serve to hinder them getting closer to Jesus?

You might want to write down some of these thoughts and pray about them over the coming days. Why not ask God to show you anything that you or that we, as a church, could or should do about it?

The Bible tells us that Jesus was bringing in a new covenant (agreement) with humanity in which animal sacrifice would be replaced by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the cross. He would be the ‘Passover Lamb’ and he would atone for human sin once and for all. This means that all the damage that our sin has done can be repaired. Through Christ, we can be new creations!

Prayer
Jesus cleansed the Temple because of sinful activities that got in the way of all people being able to truly worship God. Is there anything more important in your life than your relationship with Jesus?  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you any things that may be encroaching on your relationship with God and ask him to help you clear away any attitudes, actions or inactions that have started to come between you and him?

At the start of this week of devotions, why not make this song your prayer?

Blessing
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
(from Numbers 6:23-27)